HAIM Break Down Their Debut LP Days Are Gone, Track-By-Track

We are very excited to announce that the dynamic sister trio HAIM are VH1’s You Oughta Know artist for the month of October. Haim first appeared on critics’ radar around this time last year when their track “Forever” started making waves in the UK, ultimately earning the #4 spot on NME’s Best Songs Of 2012 list. Since then, they have released a succession of fantastic singles, dazzled audiences at SXSW, signed on with Jay Z’s Roc Nation management team, and are dropping their debut LP Days Are Gone today.

Speaking of which, we sat down with Danielle (guitar + lead vox), Este (bass), and Alana (keys) recently and had them give us insight into the making of their brand new LP, and the meanings of the 10 tracks that made the final cut. This is the latest installment in our ongoing Track-By-Track series, which starts off with the first song on Days Are Gone, the band’s insanely catchy “Falling.”

1. “FALLING”

KEY QUOTE: “I think we wrote the song at a time when we weren’t playing around LA, nothing was really happening. We kinda wrote it as a ’Stay strong’ kind of cheerleading song.”Danielle Haim

2. “FOREVER”

KEY QUOTE: “Listening back to that song, it’s the first time we heard a song we recorded and didn’t cringe. At the time, we had recorded a million songs and hated all of them. This was the first time we recorded something that we were really proud of.”Este Haim

3. “THE WIRE”

KEY QUOTE: “This is one of the oldest songs that we play in our set. We wrote it in 2008, but that was the hardest song to perfect in the studio.”Danielle Haim

4. “IF I COULD CHANGE YOUR MIND”

KEY QUOTE: “’If I Could Change Your Mind’ kinda started out as a jam. We were in the studio with James Ford, and we were really deeply into the recording vibe for the record. We had been recording the songs that we played live, but we kinda needed a break. We don’t really write with other people, but James was up for anything.”

5. “Honey & I”

KEY QUOTE: “We decided that we wanted to write a simple, guitar-based song because we hadn’t in awhile. I think that was a happy time in a relationship.”

Come back tomorrow to hear HAIM give us the inside scoop on the final five tracks on their debut LP, Days Are Gone!